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Black Friday Now Black Thursday, But Don’t Expect the Best Bargains on Either

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The competition for Black Friday "deals" is getting ridiculousInstead of spending time with their families on Thanksgiving this year, employees for Walmart, Target and other chains get to give thanks by selling consumerism to people who think they’re getting great deals (often they aren’t–more below). Yes, more big box chains now are opening their doors for “Black Friday” sales on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, which means employees of retail chains now must work on one of the only three days they traditionally haven’t had to work. Employees who don’t want to join risk drifting into part-timer purgatory or worse.

The corporate media and chain marketing campaigns again are doing their best to whip up a frenzy over supposedly great deals while encouraging people to sacrifice family time. But before rushing through dessert to ditch grandma and the kids, consider research commissioned recently by the Wall Street Journal. The headline with which it reported the results tells the story succinctly: The Myth of the Black Friday Deal (applies equally to Black Thursday). As you may surmise, you’re just as likely to save money on most items at other times in the year.

Of course, the corporate push to replace a day traditionally dedicated to family with consumerism is predictable, but here’s one ray of hope: chain employees and disgusted citizens are starting to fight back, a group of Walmart employees is planning to strike – almost unheard of in the U.S – and Target employees are protesting.

If you’d like to help defeat  the latest corporate encroachment, consider these actions:

But if you happen to participate in this madness, pause for a moment when handing over your cash and look for a moment at one of those bills. Just take a glance at George Washington’s face, or Honest Abe’s. What do you suppose those guys would think of our collective madness? We’re lucky dollar bills can’t cry.

Photo courtesy David Blackwell

Walmart vs Target Redux: More Alike Than You Think

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Walmart-vs-Target Combined LogoEditor’s Note: this isn’t the first time a convergence between Walmart and Target has been noted. Some time ago we learned that there’s little difference in the way the two companies treat their workers, despite popular perceptions to the contrary. 

First published in the Washington Post
By Katherine Boyle, on Oct 23, 2012

Along interstate highways and in suburban town centers, sometimes separated by nothing more than parking lots, stand the warring titans of modern retail, shilling flat-screen televisions next to fortified milk.

Here, they battle for the heart and wallet of the American shopper. And your allegiance is as telling as your taste in cable news or the contents of your Netflix queue: Are you cloaked in Target’s bull’s-eye red or Wal-Mart’s royal blue?

“I don’t like Wal-Mart,” said Nadirah Moreland, 39, in the shoe aisle of the Columbia Heights Target. She says Target is “kinder, gentler. They don’t aggressively usurp mom-and-pop stores like Wal-Mart does.”

“I’ve been to a Target once,” said Vanessa Cruz, 29, while perusing children’s clothes at a Wal-Mart in Fairfax. “Target has beautiful stuff, but I don’t go there. The prices are different. Wal-Mart is cheaper, and they have everything.”

Each has its loyalists — and no wonder. The stores market vastly different versions of American exceptionalism: Wal-Mart champions efficiency, thrift. Target offers style, aspiration. Wal-Mart gives us low prices on everything we need; Target tells us what we want.

Yet the companies have much in common. “The remarkable thing,” said Charles Fishman, author of “The Wal-Mart Effect,” “is that 80 percent of the stuff in Target and Wal-Mart is identical.” The prices are often identical, too. The most recent comparison by Bloomberg Businessweek found only a 46-cent difference between the two retailers per $100 of purchases. (You’ll save that 46 cents at Target, although Wal-Mart usually wins independent price comparisons.)

Target and Wal-Mart are, in short, the fraternal twins of American retail — sharing much of the same DNA, yet strikingly different.

Four stores and 50 years ago, in a coincidence that looks prophetic only in hindsight, Pax Americana gave birth to discount shopping, with Target, Wal-Mart, Kmart and Kohl’s all sprouting up in America’s heartland. The economy was booming and the concept, ingenious: Replace seasonal sales by selling discounted goods year-round. The retail revolution came before the civic one, with a growing middle class lapping up toasters and Tide for cheap, cheap, cheap. Discounters catered to the haves and have-mores, anticipating — and cultivating — the have-it-now culture that characterizes modern consumerism.

For Wal-Mart and Target, success was born of the Southern and Midwestern values championed by their respective founders. Sam Walton couldn’t have known his discounter would one day become the world’s largest private employer. And the brothers Dayton wouldn’t have guessed that Target would democratize design for an entire country.

Instead, they possessed an intuitive sense of what drives every customer, characterized by Natalie Gutierrez, 30, as she browsed ottomans in the Columbia Heights Target a few Sundays ago. “I already have everything I need,” Gutierrez said. “But I always like to come in and see if there’s something I may want.”

The booming beginnings

In 1962, the Dayton Co. opened its first Target store at 1515 W. County Rd. B in Roseville, Minn. The five grandsons of company founder George Dayton hatched the idea for an upscale discount chain based on their existing low-priced Downstairs Store.

“What made them so successful is that they’ve been very clever at executing on their core mandate: They are the upscale discounter,” said Laura Rowley, author of “On Target: How the World’s Hottest Retailer Hit a Bull’s-Eye.” “Bruce Dayton used that language in 1962. The family understood the department store model and made investments in customer service.”

And even at inception, customers responded to Target’s friendly and modern atmosphere. “Doug Dayton first heard it called ‘tar-JAY’ in 1962,” Rowley said. The tongue-in-cheek French pronunciation would stick and further the store’s cheap-chic ethos.

A few months later, Sam Walton left behind his Ben Franklin five-and-dime franchises to start Wal-Mart Discount City at 719 Walnut Ave. in Rogers, Ark. In the beginning, Walton was relatively cautious while scouting future sites, hopping into a glorified crop duster to survey small towns in the rural South. Wal-Mart wouldn’t grow with its trademark ferocity until the ’70s and ’80s.

“He was paying attention to places where nobody else was,” said Alan Dranow, senior director for heritage and marketing at Wal-Mart. “Everyone thought you had to go to urban areas or towns of 50,000. Sam said, ‘I disagree.’ He wanted to serve the underserved. So Wal-Mart grew in rural areas before everyone knew what was happening.”

What was it about 1962? Was it the housewives? The novelty of suburban shopping? This seemingly idyllic age would end soon after the consumer carnival began, with the first of the ’60s assassinations and the Vietnam War looming. Still, the four horsemen of discount grew fast and fastidiously, led by Kmart which had 162 stores by 1966. Target founded its in-house advertising team in 1968, a celebrated department that’s still in operation. By 1970, Wal-Mart was a publicly traded company, splitting its stock for the first time the next year.

“This was the dawning of a new kind of consumer economy,” Fishman said. “It changed how we think about shopping and the way we live.”

What’s remarkable about Wal-Mart and Target is not so much their 80 percent overlap as their 20 percent differentiation. They may offer the same discounts, but they have a very different sales pitch. Target — with its danceable ads, creative collaborations and in-store Starbucks — makes no apologies for actively seeking the upscale shopper, differentiating itself with design.

“When you look at Kmart or Wal-Mart, they had licensing agreements with Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen or Jaclyn Smith,” Rowley said. “Jaclyn Smith is an actress, not a designer. Target chose Michael Graves, one of the most respected architects in the country, to design his own line of products. From there, they went forward to Isaac Mizrahi. They were the very first to do that.”

“From a societal perspective, it used to be that design was the focus of the affluent,” said Barbara Kahn, professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. “But having design at Target suggests that design can be had by people who desire it at any price point.”

Except those who really can’t afford it. At a news conference earlier this month in New York, executives announced that they’re investing in mobile technologies for their smartphone-wielding customers. They’re shunning holiday layaway. “Our guests have not asked us for it,” Target chief executive Gregg Steinhafel said. Layaway is “just not one of those things that is on their radar.”

That’s why there’s a Wal-Mart down the street.

A ubiquitous presence

Ralph and Betty McDonald remember life before the box stores — but just barely. The couple moved to Fairfax 60 years ago, before Kmart, Wal-Mart and all the others came to their nonexistent neighborhood.

“There was nothing here. Nothing! No crowds,” said Betty, 78, while browsing for cakes in the bakery freezer at Wal-Mart. “I don’t even remember how long this Wal-Mart’s been here.”

The McDonalds visit Wal-Mart a few times each week, for the cakes, the necessities, the bananas selling at 44 cents a pound.

“We come here just to look around,” Ralph, 81, said, pushing the bright blue shopping cart. “Everything is so convenient now. It’s only five minutes from our house.”

Wal-Mart didn’t create the suburbs, but it did help build them. Convenience kept customers loyal, because, well, Wal-Mart was there first. (It’s also ubiquitous: Wal-Mart has 3,942 stores in the United States, whereas Target has 1,770. There are 140 million Americans who shop at Wal-Mart every week, more people than voted in the past presidential election.)

This Wal-Mart in Fairfax is a gleaming heap of pale concrete stuffed with groceries, housewares and Hello Kitty paraphernalia, a mecca of one-stop shopping. With walls swathed in cheery Wal-Mart blue and signs welcoming you to “Save Even More,” you can find 160,000 stock-keeping units, or SKUs, of stuff — the average product count at any given Super Wal-Mart.

“Pile them high and watch them fly. That was Sam’s motto,” Dranow said.

Walton was clearly onto something.

“Wal-Mart is operational excellence,” Khan said. “They’ve always prioritized efficiency and bringing down cost. They’re the ones who came in with the notion of everyday low price.”

“Wal-Mart was a huge force in teaching Americans that what mattered was price, regardless of quality,” Fishman said. “Wal-Mart didn’t create the disposable society in America, but they reinforced the idea that quality is irrelevant so long as you’re getting a great price.”

And Wal-Mart has always been masterful at reflecting the lifestyles of the people who live near its stores. So a Northern Virginia Wal-Mart will feel different from the ones in the swamplands or the desert. And the five Wal-Marts slated to enter the District beginning in 2013 will likely look different than this one just outside the Beltway, which seems bright and peppy, perhaps a bit like . . . Target?

And thus, the Wal-Mart/Target wars wage on, dividing while singing a similar jingle: Expect More. Live Better. Pay less. Save Money. Always low prices for everyone on everything.

Except the folks who need layaway. They’ll just have to go to Wal-Mart.

See also:

 

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Win for environmental law, loss for Walmart

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By Will Evans
First Published Nov. 16, 2012, in California Watch

A California appellate court has dealt a blow to Walmart’s strategy of using petition drives to push through approval of new superstores while avoiding California’s environmental law.

In a cookie-cutter pattern documented by California Watch, the mega-retailer bankrolled local signature-gathering efforts to build superstores or repeal restrictions on big-box stores in five California cities last year. Once 15 percent of local voters signed the petitions, city councils had to either approve the projects or hold a special election, which can be costly. Wal-Mart then urged cities to approve the petition rather than send it to voters, angering some officials who felt bullied.

Wal-Mart has said the strategy is necessary to avoid politically motivated lawsuits under the California Environmental Quality Act.

Voter-approved ballot measures that stem from petitions are exempt from environmental review and protected from CEQA lawsuits. Wal-Mart argued that when a city approves one of its petitions without an election, the project would be protected, too.

But in a strongly worded opinion, a three-judge appellate panel ruled late last month that the landmark environmental law still applies.

“The legal issue is important and calls for speedy resolution,” the opinion stated. “Developers’ strategy of obtaining project approvals without environmental review and without elections threatens both to defeat CEQA’s important statutory objectives and to subvert the constitutional goals of the initiative process.”

The Fresno-based 5th District Court of Appeal disagreed with a 2004 ruling by a different appellate court, setting up the possibility that the issue will ultimately be resolved by the California Supreme Court. Since the company carbon offsetting is being regularly tracked by the professionals from carbon click, this issue  will resolved in no time

The Fresno court held that a petition signed by 15 percent of a city’s voters doesn’t carry the same power as a majority-approved ballot initiative. “To hold otherwise would authorize rule by a few – the antithesis of democracy,” it said.

The case centers on a Wal-Mart expansion project in the small Gold Country city of Sonora. Attorneys who often target Wal-Mart with environmental lawsuits have sued over its use of the initiative process there, as well as in the San Bernardino County town of Apple Valley and the Silicon Valley suburb of Milpitas.

The city of Sonora argued in court filings that its citizens supported the proposed superstore so there was no point in holding an election. Wal-Mart argued that it would be unfair to “force city councils to incur unnecessary and unwanted expenses to hold elections.”

The city’s and company’s positions reveal “their failure to appreciate the importance of elections in the initiative process,” the court stated. “The results of an election represent the will of the people. A petition signed by 15 percent of the voters does not.”

The legal battle slowing down Wal-Mart’s expansion frustrates Sonora Mayor Hank Russell.

“These people just want to delay a process that should be part of a free market economy,” he said. “I don’t think it’s the city’s role to decide who can compete.”

Wal-Mart spokeswoman Delia Garcia said the existing Sonora store “has served customers faithfully and made a positive impact on the local economy.”

“We are committed to providing customers the broadest selection of products to meet their family’s needs and will evaluate all options for moving forward,” Garcia wrote in an email.

The court’s ruling goes beyond Wal-Mart, said Brett Jolley, the attorney who brought the suit.

“The opinion closes what could have been a major loophole in the CEQA process which would have allowed the wealthiest developers … to avoid CEQA and public elections by utilizing the initiative process,” he wrote by email.

Jolley quoted California Watch’s story in his opening brief, but Wal-Mart objected, moving to strike that part of the petition. The judges decided that the reference to the article did not alter their conclusions and denied Wal-Mart’s motion.

San Diego-based lawyer Cory Briggs, a longtime thorn in the side of Wal-Mart, said he would use the ruling to revive a similar lawsuit he is pursuing in Apple Valley. Briggs, who filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the Sonora case, heralded the decision as “a victory for the rule of law and for true majority rule.”

“Any developer who thinks that they’re going to buy their way to the ballot box is now going to have to do the work of actually persuading a majority of the voters,” said Briggs.

Wal-Mart has had mixed success at the ballot box. Voters in Inglewood shot down the company’s proposed superstore in 2004. But the residents of Menifee, in Riverside County, approved a Wal-Mart ballot initiative last year.

For more on this topic, see:

photo courtesy Brave New Films

Reports and Economic Impact Studies on Wal-Mart and Big Box Development

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Since other organizations now dedicate extensive time to reviewing and collecting studies on big box development and related topics, we are no longer adding to this archive. Three excellent libraries are noted and linked at: Independent Business, Chain and “Big Box” Retail Studies.

Nov 2011 –  Food for Thought (report on projected impact on Harlem’s grocers by Borough President’s office)

April 2011 – Does Local Firm Ownership Matter? (Economic Development Quarterly). Communities with many small, locally owned businesses saw greater income growth, while absentee-owned businesses had negative impact.

Apr 2011 –  Big Box Retail and Living Wage Policies (U. Cal. Berkeley Ctr. for Labor Research and Education)

Jan 2011 –  Wal-Mart’s Economic Footprint. A literature review asembled by the Center for Community Planning and Development at Hunter College (NY)

Jan 2011 –  Superstores: How to Analyze Their Impact on Your Town is a toolkit sold by Rodino Associates

Feb 2010 –  Dominant Retailers Incentives for Product Quality (pdf) (multi-university study)

Dec 2009 –  The Impact of an Urban Wal-Mart Store on Area Businesses – by Center for Urban Research and Learning at Loyola University Chicago

June 2008 –  Save Money, Live Better: a report on Walmart’s state tax avoidance schemes. Published by Walmart Watch.

June 2008 – Has Wal-Mart Buried Mom and Pop? Study by Andrea Dean and Russell Sobel of W. Virginia U.

Dec 2007 – A Downward Push: The Impact of Wal-Mart Stores on Retail Wages and Benefits A study from U. Cal. Berkeley Labor Center (10 pp pdf)

Dec 2006 – Wal-Mart and Social Capital. Produced by the American Agricultural Economics Association (8 pp pdf).

June 2006 – Study by Economic Policy Institute Says Wal-Mart’s Claimed Savings for Customers are Greatly Exaggerated (link is to text summary).

May 2006 – Wal-Mart and Crime. A report on local impacts of stores by the anti-Wal-Mart group WakeUp Wal-Mart (29 pp pdf).

Sept 2005 – What Do We Know About Wal-Mart? Compiles latest data on the corporation’s pay, benefits and compliance with laws, and compares to other retailers. New York data highlighted. (Brennan Center for Justice, 12 pp pdf).

Sept 2005 – Wal-Mart and the Waltons: Self-Interested Philanthropy (Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, pdf).

June 2005 – NBC’s Dateline investigated conditions in overseas factories that supply Wal-Mart and other retailers in this report (transcript and video clips available).

Nov 2004 – PBS’ Frontline produced the documentary “Is Wal-Mart Good for America?” and many informative articles to accompany it.

Oct 2004 – Wal-Mart and County-Wide Poverty (16 pp. pdf) is a study produced by Penn State U.

Aug 2004 – The Hidden Cost of Wal-Mart Jobs (16 pp. pdf). This study from the U. of California, Berkeley, Labor Center adds up costs to taxpayers that result from Wal-Mart employees needing various forms of welfare. Note that the Center is unabashedly pro-union. See also this Response to Criticisms by Wal-Mart and media coverage of the report.

Jan 2004 – Supercenters and the Transformation of the Bay Area Grocery Industry: Issues, Trends, and Impacts. This study (108 pp. pdf) by the Bay Area Economic Forum has the most thorough data we’ve seen on wages, prices, and numerous other issues. Though the analysis is regional, most data is national.

Jan 2004 – “Wal-Mart Supercenters, What’s in Store for Southern California?” (45 pp. pdf) Released only with the client’s (Wal-Mart) input and approval, this uniquely rosy report is suspect due to some glaring holes, such as ignoring employee benefits in its economic calculations.

July 2001 – A PBS special, “Store Wars,” explored the battle over Wal-Mart’s entry in a small town. Accompanying online resources include a teacher’s guide for helping students evaluate the issue.

Feb 1997 – The Shils Report. This huge study from Dr. Edward Shils at U. of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School has a wealth of information on big box retail impacts, predatory pricing, and much more.

Web pages from the Institute for Local Self Reliance link many other useful studies on Wal-Mart and big box retail.

See our WalMart resources page and Walmart topic page or these anti-Walmart t-shirts, stickers, and more.

Please help support this work — make a tax-deductible donation to Reclaim Democracy today!

Internal Documents of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

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Documents posted on this page are provided to enhance public understanding of Wal-Mart’s policies and internal culture. We will protect the anonymity to anyone who wishes to provide information to us, including documentation of illegal activities or documents implicitly encouraging managers to break the law.

Store Managers’ Manuals & Training Materials

A Manager’s Toolbox to Remaining Union-Free (53 pp pdf, 1997).

Sam’s Club Supervisor’s Handbook (14 pp pdf, not dated) is an abbreviated version of the “Manager’s Toolbox” for Wal-Mart’s Sam’s Club subsidiaries.

Labor Relations and You at Wal-Mart Distribution Center #6022 (44pp pdf, 1991). This is similar to the company-wide manual on unions, but customized for a distribution center.

 

Walmart Part of Chamber Campaign to Weaken Corruption Laws it Violated

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By Tom Hamburger , Brady Dennis and Jia Lynn Yang
Published by the Washington Post, April 24, 2012

Wal-Mart, the giant retailer now under fire over allegations of foreign bribery in Mexico, has participated in an aggressive and high-priced lobbying campaign to amend the long-standing U.S. anti-bribery law that the company might have violated.

The push to revisit how federal authorities enforce the statute has been centered at a little-known but well-funded arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce where a top executive of Wal-Mart has sat on the board of directors for nearly a decade.

The effort has intensified in the past two years, drawing on the backing of several large companies and trade groups such as the Retail Industry Leaders Association, where one of Wal-Mart’s top executives serves as a director. It also has involved high-powered lobbyists, including former attorney general Michael B. Mukasey.

The 1977 law, known as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, prohibits U.S. companies from offering fees or gifts to foreign officials to advance corporate interests.

There is no evidence that suggests Wal-Mart participated in the Chamber’s efforts because of its problems in Mexico. But even as the company has pledged zero tolerance for corruption around the globe, it has been a party to an effort that, some advocacy groups argue, would eviscerate the Watergate-era anti-corruption statute.

The Justice Department launched an investigation into Wal-Mart’s Mexican subsidiary in December over payments of more than $24 million in bribes to win construction permits there .

A company whistleblower told top corporate officials about the alleged bribes in 2005, The New York Times reported recently . The company launched but then shut down an internal inquiry and then failed to notify the Justice Department or the Securities and Exchange Commission of the allegations as required by law.

Wal-Mart’s corporate secretary and top ethics officer, Thomas D. Hyde, who stepped down from his job at Wal-Mart in 2010, was among the company executives who received initial reports of the bribes in 2005, the Times reported.

Between 2003 and 2010, public records show, Hyde sat on the 40-member board of the Institute of Legal Reform, a division of the U.S. Chamber that has led the way in criticizing parts of the law and talking about the need to change it.

Wal-Mart is one of more than 20 companies represented on the ILR’s board, according to the most recent tax filings from the Chamber group. Other companies include General Electric, ExxonMobil and Dow Chemical.

The retailer did not respond to questions about its participation in the Chamber’s campaign. But a person familiar with the effort, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the board’s deliberations are private, said Wal-Mart was “not particularly active” on the board or in the FCPA lobbying effort.

Wal-Mart issued a statement on Tuesday, saying that it had instituted new protocols to make sure that FCPA investigations are “managed consistently and independently” and that it had created a new role for a global FCPA compliance officer. “We are taking a deep look at our policies and procedures in every country in which we operate,” said company spokesman David Tovar.

Mukasey was at the Justice Department during the latter years of the George W. Bush administration, when enforcement of the anti-bribery law escalated after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Over the past two years, the former attorney general’s law firm has received more than $200,000 in fees from the Chamber to work on clarifying the way in which the law is enforced. Although the lobbying campaign has remained largely out of the public spotlight, it has triggered a vigorous debate in the Justice Department and on Capitol Hill, where a handful of lawmakers have considered introducing legislation to amend parts of the law.

“I am bothered by the Chamber’s effort to gut this law,” said Stanley Sporkin, former enforcement director of the SEC who helped write several parts of the statute. “This law has made an important contribution in the world. The Justice Department has been aggressive in enforcing [it], and it has produced good results.”

The debate over the FCPA has intensified in recent years, in part because of the increase in federal enforcement.

In 2004, Justice pursued two cases under the FCPA. By 2008, there were 20 actions. The tough enforcement has continued under President Obama. In 2010, Justice worked on a record 48 cases, including one that resulted in an $800 million fine against German conglomerate Siemens.

Paul Pelletier, a former supervisor for the unit at Justice charged with enforcing the FCPA, said two prosecutors were dedicated to the issue when he began in 2002. By the time he left in 2011, there were 15, as well as additional units at the FBI and the SEC.

“The more we lifted up rocks, the more we saw of it,” said Pelletier of the bribery, adding that cases turned up as companies aggressively globalized their operations.

Last fall, assistant U.S. attorney general Lanny A. Breuer said officials were planning during 2012 to release “detailed new guidance” about how the FCPA should be enforced. Still, he made clear that he had little intention of scaling back the decades-old anti-corruption law.

“This is precisely the wrong moment in history to weaken the FCPA,” Breuer said then. “There is no argument for becoming more permissive when it comes to corruption.”

Breuer’s comments came as several business groups boosted efforts to rework parts of the law. The Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform released a 28-page policy paper detailing a wish list of FCPA reforms. Among them: Measures limiting a company’s liability for the actions of its subsidiaries and a clearer definition of who qualifies as a “foreign official.”

That push has continued this year, as Justice and SEC officials have met with a wide range of industry and advocacy groups regarding the guidance the agencies plan to issue in coming months.

In February, the Chamber enlisted a disparate collection of other groups, including the American Gaming Association, the Faulkner County Farm Bureau in Arkansas and the Retail Industry Leaders Association, to sign onto an 11-page letter publicly advocating tjat federal officials clarify the statute. The letter argues that vague language in the law and the way in which investigators have enforced it have resulted in “a chilling effect on legitimate business activity.”

Those groups and others have said that they are merely looking for a measure of certainty and clear-cut guidelines from federal authorities.

Mukasey also rejected any suggestion that the Chamber effort is undermining the bribery statute, saying the proposals could ultimately strengthen the effort to fight corruption. “The clarity we are seeking will strengthen incentives for compliance,” he said, adding that the criticism of the Chamber campaign is off base. “I understand why people use that rhetoric. But I don’t see it as accurate.”

The requests by Chamber and its allies for adjustments and clarifications to the law have provoked strong criticisms from some government officials and a coalition of human rights and corporate governance groups.

In a speech last month, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reiterated that the Obama administration has no intention of allowing a scaled-down FCPA.

“We are unequivocally opposed to weakening the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,” Clinton said. “We don’t need to lower our standards. We need to work with other countries to raise theirs. I actually think a race to the bottom would probably disadvantage us.”

Harvard law professor David Kennedy co-wrote a report last year on the FCPA called “Busting Bribery,” which was published by the Open Society Foundation, backed in part by liberal philanthropist George Soros. The paper denounced proposed amendments to the law.

“In the guise of clarifying,” Kennedy said, “they are gutting the law.”

© 2012 Washington Post